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Thursday, September 29, 2011

First I would like to say thank you to the Seattle International Film Festival for presenting a special preview screening of this film and for bringing in Sam Childers and screenwriter Jason Keller for a post movie Q&A.

Machine Gun Preacher is based on the true story of Sam Childers as he goes from heroin addicted drug dealer and all around trouble maker to becoming a major force in protecting children and families from violence bordering on genocide in the heart of war ravaged Sudan. When I very first heard the name of this movie, my instant reaction without knowing any story details was that this would fall in to the same category as Hobo With a Shotgun and Machete which were very stylized Grindhouse movies that play for cheap thrills and indulgence. This movie turned out to be about as different as could possibly be and surprised me in several different ways.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

3D Technology has certainly been the story of the year so far in the world of cinema. The release of James Cameron's Avatar set off a virtual wildebeast stampede as movie studios set out to turn as many feature films in to 3D blockbusters as quickly as possible. The result of this obvious cash grab was met with mixed results as films like Clash of the Titans and The Last Airbender were so poorly converted to 3D that it actually made the image quality worse.

It was soon discovered that the preferred methods of making a 3D movie were to either film it with 3D cameras like the visually breathtaking and box office record smashing Avatar or spend as much time as possible and make every effort to make sure the conversion process is done right. Disney was at the forefront of this "quality over quantity" idea and they also had an edge with animated features being ideal candidates to present in this emerging format.

Movies like Toy Story 3 and Tangled were huge successes with the latter being a major surprise hit and only partly due to the 3D format. The studio remembered that story is more important than anything else when it comes to making a movie people will truly enjoy and want to see again and again. They were in fact the same folks that brought us The Lion King in the first place and the only question now was if they would make the conversion of this all time classic to 3D just as magical as the rest of the film.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Focusing on neighborhoods in and around the city of Seattle, this monthly bar crawl series gives people an opportunity to see new places, visit favorite haunts, and hang out with an ever changing group of friends over the course of one fun-filled evening.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

If you read my previous post about the Seahawks, you understand that I do like Tarvarus Jackson at quarterback and today's game showed a lot of the reasons why. He has the ability to manage a game and although at times he doesn't necessarily make the ideal decisions, he has yet to make the type of mistakes that cost you games. More often than not it has been other areas of the team that have faltered (special teams, receivers dropping balls, ineffective offensive line), but the quarterback will always be the first one targeted when things aren't going well. All I have seen from T-Jack is a steady and confident style of play which is exactly what the Seahawks need right now as they build on a team that is currently made up of the youngest group of starters in the NFL.

As I was sitting at my computer today, a notification popped up on my Facebook page stating I can now take a tour of the new version of my profile page and can also activate the Timeline feature now if I choose to. The first thing I did was hit activate even before taking the virtual tour since I had read some info on this Timeline feature and was already looking forward to its release.

The article below covers a presentation by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg where he covers a range of topics from the Timeline profile upgrade to the upcoming integration of services like Spotify and Netflix.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Up and coming director Nicolas Winding Refn, who hails from Denmark, has made a very bold statement with his first mainstream Hollywood effort. Best known previously for his direction of critically acclaimed films like Bronson and Valhalla Rising, Drive will definitely get his career going full speed ahead as he brings us a story full of understated drama contrasted by brutally intense action sequences.

After two weeks of the NFL season, things have played out pretty much exactly as everyone would have expected. Opening on the road in San Francisco and Pittsburgh was going to be a daunting task and you would be hard pressed to find someone that thought we would win either of those games. Going in to that first game in the bay area, we knew the Hawks had deficiencies at offensive line and question marks at several other position groups on both sides of the ball. This meant weeks one and two would be a serious uphill struggle and now that these first two games are in the books, it is very clear to me who the Seahawks starting quarterback should be moving forward.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

First, let me just say that I have not seen the original version of this film from 1971 which stars Dustin Hoffman and Susan George so I am not able to offer any comparison between the two. That being said I still had a pretty good idea of how the movie would play out based on the trailer which can be viewed at the end of this review. This is a fairly straightforward tale that does have some interesting twists and turns, but could it live up to the promise of being the intensely violent thrill ride we see touched on in the trailer?

Monday, September 12, 2011

There seems to be a lot of hype about the quality of this movie partly due to the star studded cast featuring Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburn, Jude Law, and Kate Winslet just to name a few. Director Steven Soderbergh also adds a large credibility factor due to previous critical successes that he has brought to the screen including the likes of Traffic, Erin Brockovich and his breakout feature Sex, Lies, and Videotape. All of this quality star power both in front of and behind the camera should certainly have Contagion primed for some award season honors down the road, but after watching this movie I walked out of the theater with a differing opinion that what I had already heard and read.

Friday, September 9, 2011

Having read nothing about this movie going in and only seeing what was available in the trailer, I figured I had a fairly good idea of how this story unfolds and for the most part I was correct. What I was not expecting was an engrossing story about a family broken by abuse (both substance and physical) and how the members of that family struggled not only with each other, but with their individual lives as well. As I walked out of the theater, my first thought was how, out of any film I have watched so far this year, this should be a serious contender for the coveted Best Picture Oscar.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

I uploaded this video to Youtube on September 7th, 2010 and in one year's time, it received nearly 80,000 views, 534 likes, and has been embedded on several websites around the world. I'm hoping it will get to 100,000 at some point but it seems to be slowing down so we'll see.

The picture is me and "Kat" from the video along with a Halo: reach poster that was signed by several members of the Bungie staff.

This is where we dig deep into those virtual crates to give you the best new music around. Kat from Tinksaysboo.com and MusicStreetlight is our one and only expert music contributor so stay tuned to this page for weekly new music updates and other random music related posts.

Here at TwoOhSix.com, we have a very discerning eye when it comes to selecting just the right movie theater to see a movie in whether its the latest big screen blockbuster or that little indie film that is only showing at one theater for a two weeks and then its gone. We have even broken down which theaters you should go to for the ideal IMAX experience and which theaters are faking the IMAX funk (CLICK HERE for details).

In addition to writing movie reviews for the last two years, I have also been writing business reviews on Yelp.com including most of the movie theaters I have been to in the greater Seattle area. Below you will find a list of those theater reviews which are linked from their corresponding Yelp pages. This can be used as a great guide for everything from who has the best popcorn to which theater has the biggest screens and most comfortable seats.

Congratulations! You have found the first ever post on my blog which could end up being quite historic when its all said and done so feel free to bask in the glory for as long as you can. I'm sure you have some initial questions so I have decided to answer them right away!

We will call this the PAQ (Potentially Asked Questions).

"Why do you have a blog?"
This blog was created to be an outlet for me to share and discuss my interest in topics that are important to me. There have been various attempts made over the years using different media and I suppose it all started back at Skyline elementary school with "show and tell" where my various baseball cards, comic books, and GI Joe action figures (they're not dolls!) would be on display for my classmates to marvel over.